Title: Choices and Chances: Chapter Nine

Author: Stormhawk

Chapter Word Count: 1927

Notes: Um....don't think so

Please read and Review.

Stef shifted to her office, looked around in boredom, then shifted down to Jones' lab. The tech wasn't in, probably in his office, or consulting the Mainframe.

She walked over to the slab in the middle of the room, Smith's body was lying on it. There were monitoring screens all around, outputting many readouts that all basically said 'nothing is happening'.

She shivered, his eyes were open, it wouldn't matter to the others, cause they were able to put it in a better context than her, but to her it looked like a dead body staring up at her. She knew he wasn't dead but still...

"What are you doing here?" she cringed, it was Brown.

She turned, "I'm...I was seeing if there was any change."

He stared down at her, "how much data do you need to tell you that there isn't any change and that there isn't going to be any change?"

"I can understand these screens. But the data must have gone somewhere."

"Such as where?"

"I don't know sir. But perhaps somewhere rather than nowhere."

"Only the one who created this virus would know."

"The Merovingian. But it's not likely that he's going to want to explain to an agent that the details of one of his effective weapons."

"He has many henchmen, one should be able to give us the information."

"Agent Brown are you going to find one of these henchmen?"

"Not alone," he said as he shifted them to the edge of the firewalled area.

They walked over into the firewalled area without another word. She knew the only reason he had brought her alone was just in case a firefight broke out, he would make sure that she was 'accidentally' caught in the crossfire.

After wandering around in silence for about five minutes, there was a thud behind them, and they spun around, guns ready, and saw Carlson. Brown and Carlson stared at each other for a tense second before rushing at each other. Stef took a couple of steps back and watched as the two programs beat the stuffing out of each other.

About three minutes later, they both stopped as they each had a gun pointed at the others head, tempting the other to fire. "You wanna talk now?" Carlson said with a sneer.

"Yes, I have something to discuss with you."

"And that would be?"

"Smith."

"Funny, I need to discuss that with you too."

Stef was silently getting freaked out by watching the two of them, so disturbing the same, yet totally different. Both of them together was almost wrong. No, it was very wrong.

"My boss is willing to a trade."

"We don't make deals with exiles," Brown said flatly.

"You will want to make this one. It's a simple trade. We give you Smith back, and all my boss wants is the experimental."

"What?" Stef asked incredulously. For one, Mero didn't have Smith. And two, if he did, he wouldn't give him up.

"Deal," Brown said.

"Brown?" Stef asked in disbelief. "Um hello? You just made a deal with the exiles, and without the Mainframe's consent, or mine."

"An experiment for an original, something that simple does not require the permission of the Mainframe."

"I'll take her now and I'll bring Smith here tomorrow." Brown gave a curt nod to his copy and walked away.

"Asshole," Stef muttered after him.

Carlson looked at her, "are you going to do this the easy way or the hard way?"

"I don't believe he bought that you actually had Smith."

"And I don't believe that he doesn't realize you are a traitor."

"You know, I have a hard time figuring out which one of you jerks I hate more."

Carlson almost smirked, "trust me, it's him. Now follow me."

"Unlikely."

He took out a PDA and aimed it toward her, an electronic screaming filled her head, it was enough to disorientate her for a few seconds. Carlson walked forward, grabbed her arm and pulled her into the backdoors where Mero was waiting.

"Ok, my day now officially sucks," she muttered.

"You're going to take us to Smith. Now." The Merovingian ordered.

"Go screw your escargot," she said with a sneer.

Carlson pressed the tip of his code knife into her neck and she felt a small trickle of blood leak from the wound. "Now you little bitch, before I have to break your arm again, do what the boss says."

"Well, you have to let me go first."

Mero nodded, and Carlson slowly let her go, waiting for signs of a trick. "Follow me," she said resignedly and walked down the hall toward the mystery door.

"Shoot the hinges," she said to Carlson as she pointed to it.

"Boss?"

"Do it."

Carlson shot the hinges off the door, Stef walked forward and pulled the door away from the frame, throwing it to the floor. It disappeared in a cloud of green characters.

Grabbing Carlson's hand, she pulled at a subroutine close to the surface and pressed it to the doorframe. Pulling more of it out, she enclosed the entire frame and pointed to the blackness. "It's in there."

"In there?" The Merovingian asked incredulously, "but that's nothing."

"No," Stef said with a smirk as she wiped the blood away with the back of her suit sleeve, "it's something nothing. Zero is nothing, one is something. 0x1x0x1. That's where he is. Watch out for the first step though, the landing sucks."

"Well, that's not a problem," Mero said as he pulled a PDA out of his suit and attached a wire to Carlson's neck. He pressed several things with the small stylus and Carlson shut his eyes for a moment.

A minute later, the back of the ex-agent's camouflage suit moved and something tried to push it's way out until it ripped and a pair of huge, blood-red angel wings sprouted from his back.

Carlson flexed them a few times. Mero smiled thinly, "though I have modified them somewhat, they are the wings of my first Judas."

"Those are Seraph's wings?" she asked, "that's sick," she added quietly.

"Yes," he replied, "now they can be temporarily assigned to whomever I wish. It solves problems like this."

Without another word, the three programs stepped into the darkness.

The free fall through the blackness took about two minutes. And then the ground appeared all too suddenly.

Carlson and the Merovingian touched down silently, and Stef landed in a rough crouch. "Now don't go running off and getting any ideas..." Mero warned her as Carlson took out a flashlight.

"You don't need that," Stef said with a snort, "your eyes adjust soon enough."

"Well? Take us to Smith."

Sighing, she started to lead them through the maze of passageways towards Ivy's room.

As they got nearer, however, they heard something echoing down the passageway. Carlson and Stef stopped walking, but Mero kept walking. He turned and looked at them as if to say what's wrong.

"Boss, there are several things I never want to see, and that's one of them." Before Mero could say anything else, Carlson pulled out his gun and fired four shots into the roof.

The echoing noise stopped. A few minutes later, a half-dressed Smith opened the door and saw Mero and Carlson. He turned back to the room, "find my gun Ivy."

"Not a good idea Smith."

"Stef?"

"If you take a step to your left you'll notice that Brown's evil twin brother has a gun pointed at me head. Don't get your gun."

Mero beckoned to Smith, "you and your putain, out here, now." Smith walked back into the room, and emerged with his shirt on and Ivy. "Now," the Frenchman continued, "since I'm feeling uncharacteristically charitable. I'm going to give you a choice."

"And what choice is that?"

"Which one of your bitches do you want to take back to the Matrix?"

"Ivy can't leave this place," he stated flatly.

"I have the means to make it possible. Stabilizing her code is a simple enough matter. For me anyway, I doubt your useless tech could manage anything quite this advanced."

After a long moment, Smith replied, "then I choose Ivy."

"You jerk!" Stef yelled at him. Mero nodded to Carlson who hit her over the head with his gun.

Smith watched silently as Stef fell to the floor unconscious. Ivy wrapped her arms around him, "thank you," she said as she leant up and kissed him.

Mero walked over and stuck the wire from his PDA into Ivy's neck and entered a code. She shook a little and then smiled, he removed the wire and walked back over to near Carlson.

"Follow us," Mero demanded.

Smith looked down at Stef as they walked past. He had had to make a choice, and he had made it, for good or ill. "Forgive me," he whispered voicelessly as they walked down the corridor.

The strange group made their way through the rotunda and out to the exit point. Mero pointed his PDA at Smith and it emitted a high-pitched frequency. Smith teetered a bit, but Ivy held him steady. "Are you ok?" she asked him.

"I'm blind..." he announced slowly.

"The effect is temporary," Mero announced. Carlson grabbed Smith by his collar and Ivy held onto Smith. The Merovingian put his hand on Carlson's other shoulder and the ex-agent flew them all back up to the backdoor corridor.

Crashing through the repairing backdoor, they landed quite a bit less elegantly than when they had landed in 0x1x0x1. "Remind me to cut your pay," Mero hissed angrily.

Ivy guided the temporarily blind Smith down the hall, following the other two programs. Carlson opened one of the doors into the chateaux and everyone followed him in.

By the time that Smith's blindness had worn off, he was cuffed and they were in a room full of computer equipment and a chair with restraints.

"My how the mighty have fallen," The Merovingian said with a laugh. "To think, if I had know all these years that all it took to capture the great Agent Smith was a mere woman, I would have been in control of this world by now."

"If you are planning on trying to access my agent coding for your own uses, then you are wasting your time, the security is too heavy for a second-rate exile like you to break through," Smith said with a sneer.

"Indeed. Well I am not planning on spending my time acting like a hacker, so you are the one who's going to remove the security for me."

"That is not going to happen."

Mero snapped his fingers and Carlson, now without the wings, grabbed Ivy and held her up against the wall. "Carlson enjoys killing humans, so either you hack through your own code, you second-rate system program, or Carlson gets to play with your girlfriend, and if there's anything left when he's finished, my wolves get a new chew toy."

Smith looked up at Ivy, and she had tears of fear streaming down her face, "don't let them hurt me Smith...please."

Smith walked over to the exile's computer and started inputting the codes that would allow him to access his security programming. It was going to take a long while, system program security is tight, agent security is tighter, and his security was the greatest of all, since he was the first agent, and was senior to all of the others. The Alpha Agent, if you will.

And the Alpha Agent had just lost to an enemy.